Changing Story Called Key To Murder Trial

The fate of a teen-ager accused of bludgeoning a doctor to death depends on witnesses who have repeatedly changed their story, lawyers said on Thursday.

During opening arguments in the Broward Circuit Court trial of John Worthy, 17, of Davie, lawyers for both sides said that the key witnesses in the case claimed to have seen Worthy running from the scene of the murder.

Worthy is accused of beating Dr. Francisco Garcia of Plantation with an aluminum baseball bat during a robbery on Nov. 16, 1986, outside Bernadette Catholic Church in Davie. Garcia, 52, an internist at Broward General Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, died two hours after the beating at Memorial Hospital in Hollywood.

The teen-ager is charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery.

Garcia had gone outside the church to make a telephone call during Mass after his beeper went off. While returning to the church, he was attacked, possibly by more than one person.

Several teen-age boys who had been near the church at the time of the beating claimed to have seen someone sitting down in a portable classroom near the church, lawyers said. They claim later to have seen the same person run past them carrying a baseball bat.

According to prosecutor Peter LaPorte, the person turned and looked at the boys.

``They know him, they saw him and they recognized him,`` LaPorte said.

The boys at first told police they had seen someone, but that they did not know the person.

Two of the boys, however, later told police that they could identify the suspect. When police called on them to look through pages of mugshots, the boys agreed between themselves to say that the person on page two in the left- hand corner was the person they had seen.

``Out of fear of retaliation, they dug themselves a hole,`` LaPorte told jurors. ``They were so scared they conspired among themselves to pick the wrong person.``

Detectives, however, had switched the pages after the first boy saw the book, so that the two identified different people. They later told police that Worthy was the suspect and that they knew him.

Worthy`s attorney, Victor Tobin, said that the boys identified Worthy after learning that there was a reward available. He said that all the boys involved had repeatedly changed their stories.

``The police, having some sense, knowing they were dealing with two liars, switched the pages on them. Had the police not changed the pictures, some other poor devil would be sitting here,`` Tobin said.

He also said that the boys were not afraid of retaliation, and had told a number of people what they saw, including Worthy`s brother.